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• George Szirtes paints a portrait of his mother through his words, and sometimes with actual portraits that bring the subject alive. He honestly tells readers his need to invent memories to give himself something to hold on to, but he does it such a believable and masterful way.

• George Szirtes has been a major presence in the poetry scene for some time. His poetry often experiments with forms and explores the relationship between language and experience, be that through imaginative play or his family history. There is often an exploration also of what identity means and the place an individual presence has in the collective sweep of events. This book is his first work of length in prose, exploring and attempting to reconstruct the presence of his mother. The presence of his mother has appeared in Szirtes' poetry for example in a sequence "The Photographer in Winter." The title of the book has an obvious echo of that sequence title. Szirtes mentions other times when this has happened, describing his mother as his "psychopomp," or guide to the spirit of the city of Budapest in many of his other poems, especially a long poem called "Metro." But it would be a mistake to see this book as just an extension of Szirtes' poetry. The book is a memoir, written as prose reflections of varying lengths which often speak with a poetic precision that puts flesh on the woman who was his mother. It begins with her attempted suicide that ended tragically because of a delay getting her to a hospital. The cause of the attempt appears to have been anxieties over her health, though other aspects of her history may have come into play. This is all explored moving backwards in time, unpeeling layers, though times that include building a home in Britain after escaping Hungary after the Soviet invasion of 1956. Back into the circumstances of the time, how it was the mother who influenced their decision to leave to the time of George's birth. From here there is a slight change in stile where Szirtes speaks of his mother existing before him and the things he has been able to trace including the circumstances of his parents marriage and her being interned in a concentration camp during the war because of her Jewish background. All of this is told. In Jung's essay of the Mother Archetype he talks about mother's having loving and terrifying aspect- especially for a child. Szirtes' mother appears certainly to have had this about her, though it is the love which predominates. Also, as is pointed out, she was more than a mother, and was amongst other things a photographer. This is a fascinating journey into the mystery of personhood, motherhood and the place of individuals in the sweep of history and what makes all of us what we are. In the end we are still left with some mystery, and maybe that is the point. It is all beautifully told.

• Writen in a very rich English language. The book tells parts of his mothers sad history and the hard living in the post war time, the truth and sadness.

• A history, memoir, biography--this book encompasses more than one literary purpose. It is the story of a brilliant British-Hungarian poet's mother, her culture, war and suffering. Quite remarkable.

• I'm having enough problems sorting out my own family in that period without quite so many mysteries. I admire his joined-up imaginings to try to tell us about then and there and to try to get us to understand what war and national striving can do to the characters in his family.

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